The Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art is pleased to present Hal Stowers:  Coastal Florida Fragilities, a retrospective exhibition documenting the 40-year career of one of Florida’s preeminent naturalist artists. Although academically trained as a landscape architect, Stowers has used his love of nature and talent as a visual artist to draw attention to the fragility of our coastal areas while encouraging preservation of these natural resources.  His documentation of the beauty, changes and challenges affecting Florida’s Gulf Coast is conveyed through a mastery of media including pen and ink drawing, oil and acrylic paint, watercolor, color lithography, hand-colored intaglio printmaking, monotypes, and stainless steel.    Because of the grassroots efforts by environmental activists like Hal Stowers, the pristine waters and white beaches of Pinellas County are now part of our collective pride.  The events of the past few months regarding the Deep Water Horizon disaster remind us that the art of Hal Stowers remains a poignant commentary on the vulnerability of Florida’s coastal lands in the threat of catastrophic change.  For Stowers, there is the hope that his art communicates a passion and concern for the natural environment that will “affect values and bring more sensitive decisions regarding our precious natural habitats.” 

HAL STOWERS: ENVIRONMENTAL ARTIST          

In 1975, Crystal Beach artist Hal Stowers created an extraordinary suite of six etching/aquatints entitled Soliloquies to Disappearing Fragilities.  This series was intended as a response to man-made threats on the barrier islands, wetlands and shoreline of the west coast of Florida where development, dredge and fill operations and insensitivity to the natural beauty were dramatically changing the landscape.  Throughout the 1970s Stowers and his wife, B.J., became ardent grassroots environmentalist fighting the developers, lobbying for protective laws and advocating for governmental acquisition of sensitive coastal lands. Recognition of Stowers as an environmental artist followed with numerous commissions, awards and exhibitions and he was featured as the naturalist artist for such milestone events as the American Bicentennial (1976), 50th anniversary of the Florida State Park System (1985), Pinellas County 75th Diamond Jubilee (1987), and Year of the Gulf of Mexico (1993) and in 1993, he was recognized as Distinguished Landscape Architecture Alumnus from the University of Florida.   Hal Stowers’ drawings, prints and watercolors during these years documented coastal areas under direct threat of change, such as the development of high rises on the fragile barrier island of Sand Key.  In 1978, St. Petersburg Times writer Christina Cosdon wrote “these works (of Hal Stowers) are a record of what may someday be a precious scenario of the way it was… ”.    Today Egmont Key, Honeymoon Island and Caladesi Island in Pinellas County and the Robert E. Crown Wilderness Park in Pasco County are just a few of the preserved areas that Stowers actively fought for and documented in his art.     

FROM MONOCHROME TO AN EXPLORATION OF COLOR    

The earliest works of Hal Stowers were conceived as large monochromatic paintings devoid of color, such as renderings of threatened Honeymoon Island and Caladesi Island. Working in sepia tones, Stowers does not emphasize the sky or indicate bird activity, instead he focuses on the vegetation and landscape that faces possible removal. The powerful simplicity of these canvases conveys an almost ghost-like quality, as if they are slowly fading away.   In 1976 Stowers met Julio Juristo, a Tamarind-trained master printer who had left the University of South Florida’s famous Graphicstudio to establish his own print studio in Ybor City.  Their relationship resulted in a collaborative friendship at Topaz Editions that lasted nineteen years.  During this time Stowers embraced the printmaking mediums of color lithography and hand-colored etching/aquatint.  In these prints and in his paintings, Stowers transitioned from a defined absence of color to an absolute celebration of color.  For Stowers, his landscapes embrace the transitory time of sunrise or sunset -- those moments when nature revels in an intense beauty and awe.